


The Next Day

by winterpalace



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous Sexualities, Canon Compliant, Class Differences, Class Issues, F/M, Growing Old Together, Growing Up Together, How Do They Rise Up, Life Partners, Revolutionaries In Love, Sex Work, The People's Revolution of the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 06:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11008107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterpalace/pseuds/winterpalace
Summary: "All of us hope for a little redemption, whether we deserve it or not." --Havelock VetinariThere'd been all of a few hours of truth, justice, freedom, and - importantly - reasonably-priced love before the soldiers had moved in.  Had she expected any different?





	The Next Day

**Author's Note:**

> Discworld spoilers through "Night Watch".

### The Prologue

_"Hold still," said Sandra, through pins clenched between her teeth. "Or you'll end up with a terrible prick." She threaded the needle through the edging on the lace panel and layers of blue satin, trying carefully to avoid Rosie's flesh beneath it as she repaired the torn stitching._

_"I won't dignify that with a response," said Rosie, who was certain - half-certain, at any rate - that Sandra knew very well what she was saying. It was so hard to know._

_A waiter pushed passed them with a clattering tray of hors d'ouevres for the guests in the ballroom, which had started to fill with the buzz of conversation and the atonal squeak of musicians tuning up._

_Rosie twisted her head to glance through the crack in the door as he went through. "I don't know how I'll know Lord Venturi. It's not like I do a lot of business with his class of nob."_

_"Emerald waistcoat embroidered with gold peacocks," said a male voice, "and his pomade, of which he uses too much, smells of vanilla and tobacco. Dark hair, slightly balding, not overly tall. More than the usual amount of neck."_

_Rosie and Sandra, who had believed themselves to be alone in the passageway, aside from the occasional flow of food and drink from the kitchens, turned at the voice. A skinny young man - a boy, really - of about sixteen or seventeen sprawled on the divan by the window, focused intently on a thick book._

_"Here, have you been here this whole time?" snapped Rosie, the color rising in her face._

_The little prat barely looked up from his book at that. "Of course not," he said. "I could hardly see Lord Venturi's waistcoat from in here, could I? My aunt sent me to see who'd arrived."_

_"Generally," said Sandra with a sniff, "gentlemen don't watch ladies while they change."_

_"To be sure," he said, turning a page delicately._

_Rosie shot Sandra a look. "Come on, Sandra. Hurry up and get me sewed into this thing. I need to be out there before the champagne." She inspected her curls in the mirror, adding a hairpin around the crown of her head and pulling a few loose around her throat._

_A dark-haired lady in lilac and purple silk swept into the hall. "There you all are, my dears. And I see you've met my nephew." The boy climbed dutifully to his feet, resting the book on the cushion behind him. He assumed a carefully blank expression while Lady Meserole straightened his cravat. "There we are. Now it's time for the show to begin, I should think."_

 

### One - The Twenty-Fifth of May

There'd been all of a few hours of truth, justice, freedom, and - importantly - reasonably-priced love before the soldiers had moved in. Had she expected any different? Had she? She really had. She and Sandra had staked their lives on it, and now here she was, a grimy seamstress in a filthy alleyway, with men (and the occasional grandmother) fighting in the streets. Goodbye to the People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road.

A few hours. These are Snapcase's men, thought Rosie, it's already fallen apart, and it only took a few hours.

It'd still be worth it if they got their guild, but that was looking less and less likely by the minute. Winder's blood wasn't dry yet, and Snapcase was finishing the job he'd started. A promise made to the seamstresses who worked the streets he was razing now wouldn't be worth the paper it was printed on, if anyone had bothered to commit it to paper in the first place. That's the thing about seeing someone as a means to an end, she thought. The odds were, he saw you the same way. The odds were, he was right. Money saw to that.

The streets didn't run red with blood, but brown with mud. So not very different than any other day, if she was feeling cynical, and she was. The blood was in the air, a foul tang of iron and decay. You could smell it, and you could smell desperation. Rosie had kneed one soldier in the fork, hard enough to do some real damage. She'd stabbed another, not fatally but badly enough, then fled, unable to stop panicking. She didn't mind violence, not as such. She was from the city. Slaughter was different. _This_ was different.

But she couldn't keep her eyes off it. It was a strange need to observe, to witness, as if a witness would change things. It never did. But it meant she was watching when a shadow dropped down from the roof of the millinery shop and took the pulse of one of the men from behind the barricade. She recognized the boy who stepped out of that shadow, the boy who picked the lilac plume off the body and joined the fight. It was Madam Meserole's nephew, a posh schoolboy barely old enough to shave. His first name was Havelock, and if he had a second name, she'd never heard it. Meserole, possibly. He was the quiet sort, with his nose always in a book. Even the Assassins had their swots. She was surprised to see him here. She wouldn't have guessed he'd had it in him.

Yet there he was, arcing through the street, stopping a soldier from putting a sword through old Mr. Kettle from the sweet shop, with one knife to the soldier's throat and the other through his right kidney. Mr. Kettle, who dipped freely into the big barrel of ten-to-a-penny green peppermints when there were children in the shop who looked as though they ought to spend their money on something more nutritious than sweets. The soldier crumpled, and the black shadow with the flash of purple swerved away.

"In his _teeth_?" said Rosie to herself, strangely furious with the boy. What gave him the right? It wasn't his fight, by rights. It was here, on her streets, in her alleys. It belonged to butchers and seamstresses and shopkeepers, the sort of people who wouldn't see a spare dollar from one month to the next. What gave him the _right_ to dart through the skirmish with the odd impulsive elegance of the very young; tall and slim and dark, with weapons in his hands and a sprig of lilac flowers clenched in his teeth like some romantic revolutionary hero? He probably wouldn't even get his hands dirty. His sort didn't.

What was left of the barricades would come down. They had to. Most of them had been dismantled when word got out about Winder. The Watch had tried to hold Treacle Mine Road, but there had been deaths. Sergeant Keel had been one of them. Madame Meserole had warned him about making enemies on both sides. The thing was, Keel had warned them about Snapcase. How had he known? Increasingly, Rosie wondered how they'd _not_.

Rosie dashed out from the alley. The rest of the barricades would come down. The people fighting under the lilac, all they could do was try to hold off the soldiers long enough to clear the streets, and maybe, if they were lucky, go to ground themselves in the confusion.

"Come along, Mr. Kettle," she said, helping the man to his feet. "Let's get you inside, then." The doors would be barred, but the millinery shop had a cellar that opened into the alleyway beside it. She looked behind her, and, as two soldiers sunk to their knees beside him, the Meserole boy watched her with cool blue eyes. Rosie shivered. He thrust a woman towards her, a middle-aged lady, too terrified to walk without the push. Rosie nodded at him and reached her hand out to the woman. "Come on, missus," she said. "Quick, now."

She dragged them both by the hands. The cellar door to the millinery shop, the wood none too sturdy underneath multiple thick coats of cracking green paint, was locked when she tried it, and failed to bend under attempts to kick it in. Not clever, that. How much good is a broken door for keeping the streets out?

"Go away!" cried a voice from inside. "Nothing worth your time here!"

"Mrs. Filpot?" said Rosie. "I'm... a friend of Sandra's. Sandra Battye's. Can you fit two more?"

"Go away!" repeated the voice.

"They can't stay out here, Mrs. Filpot," said Rosie. "Please."

The door opened a crack. "A friend of Sandra's?" said Mrs. Filpot, one eye peering out. "'Ere, you're a seamstress. I've seen you. No better'n you ought to be, eh, my girl?"

"Mr. Kettle," said Rosie firmly, pushing him forward. "And this lady. Please, Mrs. Filpot, it's bad out here, and not getting better."

Mrs. Filpot opened the door a few more inches and looked down the alley towards the street. "Come on, then, if you're coming," she said, nudging Mr. Kettle inside, then the woman.

"Lock the door," said Rosie. "Lock it tight."

"You're not coming, dear?" said Mrs. Filpot, moral outrage temporarily forgotten.

She should. She really should. But this was her fight, wasn't it? She'd created this. She'd created both sides of this fight, Snapcase and Keel both. All right, she'd just had her hand in, one of many, but it'd been an important hand, in both cases. Rosie Palm was very good with her hands, she thought bitterly. Couldn't walk away now, not when it was hers.

But it was too late, wasn't it. Standing in the middle of Treacle Mine Road, she knew. The skirmishes near the Watch House had died down enough that she could hear what was coming across the bridge. Couldn't see it, not in the middle of the night. But she could hear.

"Regiment's coming!" she screamed, grabbing her skirts and running towards the lights of the Watch House. "Regiment's coming across the bridge!"

They'd dealt with the last one, the butchers and bakers and little boys in Watch uniforms (and one lone Assassin, she thought). All those regimental uniforms on the ground. Or scattered. Or switched sides. And now they were coming again, and they'd keep coming.

"Clear the streets!" Rosie yelled. She yelled until she was hoarse. "Regiment's coming!"

"Bloody oath," muttered a plump Watchman, hauling himself up from the steps. He mopped his forehead. "'Ere, Leggy, give me a hand."

"What's up, Fred?" said another Watchman.

"Fresh regiment's comin', Leggy," said Fred. "Help me get the bodies in. We're not leavin' 'em Keel or Ned or Dai, gods help me, we're not. Then we've got to get that door barred. Everyone in who's able, and even more so them that's not."

There wasn't enough _time_ , thought Rosie, watching Fred and Leggy lift their sergeant's corpse between them. She dashed in to help a Watchman lift up the body of an old man with an army mustache and some lilac in his buttonhole. The Meserole boy was helping with a third corpse.

Rosie grabbed a lit torch on the way out of the Watch House. There wasn't enough time, and there weren't enough men, she thought. She held it to the overturned cart on the street, until the wood caught, then jerked back, startled, when someone caught her by the arm.

"Give it to me," said Havelock, taking the torch from her. "You pile it up in the streets, all you can find, and I'll light it."

The gutters were full of broken wood and damp paper. It smoked horribly, which was probably good, all things considered. But Rosie was glad it wasn't her trying to get it lit, flames lighting up her location in the dark. She got halfway down the street when she saw the glint of gold braid coming out of the darkness. She turned and ran, into the hazy, blinding screen of smoke and flame. It nearly choked her, and she couldn't see a thing, but she could hardly turn around, could she?

Rosie ducked into the alley beside the bakery to catch her breath, and saw a black shape on the street. Oh, the idiot, the soldiers were almost right on them. She dashed out and pulled the Meserole boy into the alley with her. "Come _on_ ," she said in as loud a whisper as she dared. "You can climb, can't you?" There was a rusty balcony on the shop attached to the back of the bakery, and from there, a ladder to the roof. No one could possibly climb up to it, but he was an Assassin, wasn't he?

Havelock looked at it for a moment, and at the half-wall between the shops where the rubbish was piled up. He pulled himself up the half-wall, leapt at the facing wall, and swiveled mid-air to push himself off it and catch at the balcony's outer ledge. He reached down a hand to her. Rosie hesitated. She wasn't a small girl, he'd never lift her.

"I suggest you do," he said. And he was right, the soldiers were so close she could hear their swords jingle; what else could she do? She took his hand, and he pulled her up to the balcony, swinging his legs over the rails to lever her up. Rosie felt like her arm was ripping off, but grabbed at the rusty iron rail.

On the roof, the chimneys of the bakery and the cobbler's sat at right angles to each other, shielding a small part of the roof from the wind. Wisps of smoke came out of the bakery chimney; even after tonight, the oven was being stoked for the morning's bread. They huddled behind the bakery chimney, pressed close to each other and the warm bricks to keep warm in the midnight chill. The marching had stopped; she could hear someone banging on the Watch House door.

If you looked across the river, thought Rosie, if you didn't look down, things looked peaceful. Things didn't sound entirely peaceful. Hundreds of men, some on horses, some with artillery, couldn't disperse silently. On the other side, an almost eerie silence. And below, people who had died, but hadn't realized it yet. On a bad night, you heard these sorts of moans in the Shades, people who'd got unlucky in the dark. Even in the Shades, you didn't get so many.

"Someone should put them out of their misery," said Rosie in curt, clipped tones. "They're dying anyway." She closed her eyes in a vain attempt not to hear, and was glad to have someone very, very alive sitting next to her.

"Someone did," said Havelock. He thrust his hands into his pockets to get them warm. "Not so many of the soldiers, I admit. Ought I have done them, too?"

"Yes," said Rosie. "You ought to have. But I'm not going to be the one to say so." Let them stew, she thought. Let them be. They deserved it. But they didn't, of course. A fair number of them had just been men from this part of town, too. The difference between them and us was just uniforms. Well, uniforms and orders. Orders to bring chaos and death into the one peaceful part of the city. They didn't need to follow them. "They didn't _need_ to do it," said Rosie aloud.

"Hmm," said Havelock, a sound that told her nothing one way or the other. "It's too late now, anyway. We've done what we can do. It's up to their side now."

Their side. He'd left the soldiers, thought Rosie, and helped the people from Dimwell and Dolly Sisters and Treacle Mine Road. Helped them to die, yes, admittedly. But also pushed the living ones towards her, towards covered alleys, behind furniture and carts. And this was still Lady Meserole's nephew, that boy who'd sat in the corner of their meetings reading Quirmian philosophy, looking as though butter wouldn't melt. What sort of boy _was_ he?

She pushed closer to him to keep warm, and he leaned against her, covering more of her side with his body.

"You can see the palace from here," said Rosie quietly. On the other side of the river, it was aglow, all the lamps lit, both splendid and terrible.

Havelock glanced only briefly. "You can see the palace from everywhere," he said.

"How long do we need to stay up here?" she said.

"An hour, maybe a little more. They'll post sentries, but they'll get bored."

Rosie blew on her hands and rubbed them together to warm them and get the blood flowing again after the climb. Don't ask him if this was all worth it, she thought. If he says yes, it'll be terrible, and if he says no, it'll be terrible, too.

Now he was looking at the palace, too, and she wondered what the expression on his face meant. She wondered what he saw in the palace when he looked.

"Are you cold?" he said suddenly.

"Not too much," said Rosie. But she wasn't too proud to keep from moving closer and nestling against his chest. She'd swear it was just for the warmth if he said anything.

"Good," he said. "The city's very beautiful from the roof level, I've always thought. More so at night, admittedly."

Rosie looked at him in the moonlight. He was slightly flushed, faint pink splotches on pale cheeks, a man's sharp cheekbones becoming visible on a boy's soft face, and his chest moved with steady, deep breaths, as though his body was still flooding his lungs with oxygen, but he was calm and very, very still.

"What are you, sixteen?" she said.

"Seventeen," said Havelock.

Good gods, seventeen. Old enough to move through a fight like a grown man, young enough to pluck flowers off of dead men and fight for lost causes like an idealistic boy. Please, thought Rosie, don't let him think that things like this end in kisses from grateful girls. Or that it's a good night to become a man. It's not. It's just not. Don't let him be that romantic. (Or worse, she thought, thinking about the senior boys at the Assassin's Guild. He could think that I owe him a quick half-and-half at a discount. He wouldn't be the first. Even the romantic boys with books glued to their faces were prone to losing what little common sense they had around seamstresses. Especially at seventeen, all adrenaline and hormones.)

And it just wasn't the night for that. She was angry and tired, and people had died. Good people, who'd just tried to do what was right. And he'd been glorious and good, too, and more than a little beautiful, in his strange way, dark and elegant and sure. People had lived because of him. He was warm and solid beside her, and she was glad he was there. But it just wasn't the night.

She felt him shift forward and saw his hand move. "Don't spoil it by grabbing what's not yours," said Rosie sharply.

"Of course not," said Havelock. He tucked a crushed sprig of lilac into the lacing of her bodice and sat back against the brick chimney. "I'm giving you what's yours."

"Oh," said Rosie after a long pause. "That's all right, then." She took his arm, and he let her. After a moment, he put his hand on hers, just to warm it.

 

### Two - The Next Day

"Doctor Follett has just left," announced Lady Meserole from the doorway.

"I'm aware," said Havelock, without looking up. He lay on the red velvet chaise in his aunt's sitting room with a pile of books beside him, his face buried in a volume on dwarfish royal succession as related by metalworking scroll motifs, with illustrated plates. He hadn't moved all morning or afternoon, except to fetch some tea and ask the cook for a late breakfast. It was, he felt, an acceptable languor. He'd rather gone all out the previous night.

"I'd imagine you'd want to take an interest, Havelock," said his aunt. Not precisely a scolding, as he was a bit old for that sort of thing, but certainly... a mood. Yes, a mood.

"I do, Madam," he said, "I assure you." He put a bookmark in to mark a particularly fine etching and looked up. "I presume, as he didn't stay, that the news is not celebratory."

"The world is a disappointing place, Havelock," said Madam. "But ordinarily it does one the courtesy of pretending to be otherwise for a short time. If one goes to all the trouble of throwing a revolution for a man, one expects the niceties to be observed."

"The Cable Street facility is gone, at least," said Havelock, who privately wasn't certain that he would expect the niceties to be observed. That presupposed that people were nice. Nice people probably existed, but he'd never thought to include Lord Snapcase in their number.

"No thanks to him," snapped Madam. "You didn't manage to keep Keel alive a second time, I see." It was peevish and petty, but Havelock knew it was disappointment, and not disappointment in him.

"I was too late," he said. "I regret that. He was... surprising."

Madam smoothed her violet frock. She sat in a delicate gilt Quirmian chair across from him. "I suppose we shall do the best we can," she said. "As you say, the Particulars are gone. Whatever the Patrician might wish to do, he has been curtailed somewhat. And I suppose it's too soon to go through all of this again..." She trailed off and looked at Havelock for confirmation of this. He nodded. She continued. "It's too soon. The people need stability. It's a shame, though, because he will never again be this vulnerable."

"The problem, Madam," said Havelock, "is finding the right replacement in twenty-four hours. It can't be done. It took months to find Snapcase, and look how well that turned out." He regretted it when he said it, because his aunt had been one of the people who had selected Snapcase, and he had no desire to hurt her. "In any case, he may well work out for the best. The day one's predecessor is assassinated is probably quite a trying one, when it comes to one's own judgment and sense of safety. Teething pains, that's all."

"Do you think so?" said Lady Meserole.

No, thought Havelock. But he nodded. "With the right guidance, I see no reason why not," he said. Guidance onto someone's sword, for preference, he thought.

"I sincerely hope so," said Lady Meserole. "He is 'reviewing the feasibility of our requests in the current climate'."

All promises broken, then. Surely he wouldn't be such a fool, thought Havelock. To make all those enemies within a day of taking office, and so needlessly. After all, what had been asked of him? Nothing the city didn't need in the first place. Oh, all right, a few small favors, but not many. Madam wasn't silly, and old Follett was all right. The old families were self-interested, but not greedy, on the whole. No point, when you already own four-fifths of the city between you. And the ones who'd had best cause to be greedy had asked for the least of all. Miss Battye, though a fine needlewoman, would gain no benefit at all from legalizing the seamstresses, and Miss Palm —

"Miss Palm isn't to get her guild, then?" said Havelock, removing the bookmark and flipping the page.

"It is not," said Madam tightly, "'a profession'. And if it _were_ , 'it's not the sort of profession we ought to encourage young gels to take up, what'."

Havelock looked into the air thoughtfully, then went back to reading. "Then he ought to tax it," he said. "Since he's unlikely to reduce demand for the service otherwise." He turned another page. "Tell me, if he believes the flower of Ankh-Morpork maidenhood, if I may so call it, is unsuited to the work in question, whom does he intend to enlist in their place? And, as there's no guild licensed by the city, by what authority?"

"I shall have to meet with Rosie," said Lady Meserole. "She'll have to be told. I'll arrange a meeting this week."

"I'll tell her," said Havelock. He put down his book and jumped up, grabbing an apple from the bowl on the side-table and shining it on his trousers before taking a bite.

 

He found her just before sunset near Misbegot Bridge. It wasn't necessary for a seamstress to be lovely, he knew; skill would out, or so he'd read, which was the proper way of the world so far as Havelock was concerned, even if the world sometimes took a little convincing in the matter. But Rosie was lovely. Pale and auburn-haired, she glinted like gold and copper in the orange sunset. She had the sort of soft figure that inspired great painters, though Havelock wondered if part of the appeal for them wasn't that it showed off their mastery of chiaroscuro all the better on all the round surfaces.

"Oh," said Rosie, looking him up and down, "it's you."

"Have you eaten?" said Havelock.

"What?" Rosie squinted into the setting sun. "No."

He offered her a couple of pieces of bread and butter wrapped up in brown paper. "I thought you might be hungry."

Her eyes narrowed as she tried to decide if he was making fun of her.

"I've a message," he said. "Not here. Take me somewhere private." No one knew private places like a seamstress, he thought, and just how private they really were.

Rosie took his arm. "Of course, dearie," she said flatly, "let's go, dearie. My, what a pretty boy."

Havelock looked down at her. "Does that _work_?" he said.

"I usually try a little harder," she said. "But you'd be surprised."

"I doubt it," murmured Havelock.

"I try not to do the streets, if I can help it," said Rosie. "I don't call what I do indecent, but hawking it like it was cheap sawdust-filled sausages might be, when you stop to remember that you're the sausage." She unwrapped the brown paper and pulled apart the two pieces of bread and butter before biting into a slice. "No jam?"

"Jam tomorrow, never jam today," said Havelock. He grimaced. "That's rather the problem, I'm afraid."

"Oh," said Rosie, suddenly very still. "That sort of message."

He nodded.

 

Two elderly ladies with white hair and knitting needles in hand peered at them from the ragged sitting room by the bottom of the stairs.

"Oh, now," said one, approvingly. "Assassin. Very nice." The other nodded her head.

"Not a client, Dotsie," muttered Rosie. She slammed the door and moved towards the stairs. They were carpeted, but the carpet had seen better days. It was worn through in the center of the treads, and there were burns from cigarette ash.

"What's that, dear?" said the old lady with the parrot-headed umbrella beside her, with a deceptive alertness.

"He's not a punter," said Rosie.

Havelock cleared his throat. "It's kind of you to think of my reputation," he said. "I suspect these ladies wouldn't think the worse of me, though."

"Of course not," said Dotsie, looking at her companion, "would we, Sadie?"

"Not as _such_ , Dotsie, no," said Sadie. "Very kind, is our Rosie. Always bringing home strays. You've not upset her, now, have you? I can't help but notice our Rosie's a bit upset."

"Leave it alone," said Rosie. "It's not business. Not that sort of business, anyway. I'll deal with this one. He's no trouble."

"You only had to say, dear," said Dotsie, returning to her knitting.

Rosie pulled Havelock upstairs.

 

Her lodgings weren't big. The room was mostly taken up by a double bed shoved against the wall. The sheets were clean, but worn, as if washed frequently, the bed-spread a vaguely Klatchian affair, with bright colors and beads and little mirrors sewn on. There was a wooden chair, and a short chest of drawers draped in a large embroidered shawl of the sort music-hall dancers wore when they weren't wearing much else. It was colorful and garish, as if designed to draw a distracted eye away from the fact that seamstresses owned actual clothes and put them in battered old dressers, just like one's sainted mum. Under the bed, a stack of fresh sheets and, Havelock noted with curiosity, four or five books at the pillow end, right where someone could reach them before going to sleep.

Rosie turned, her hands on her hips. "No guild," she said.

Havelock shook his head. "No," he said.

"No guild," she repeated. "They promised."

"Lord Snapcase doesn't seem to recall many of the conversations he had before yesterday," said Havelock.

"Then what the hell was it all for," said Rosie. She glared at him with a quiet, burning anger. "What the hell was it for?"

And, disquietingly, Havelock found he didn't have an answer for her. "It had to be done," he said. "You know it did."

"Yes," said Rosie. "But that wasn't why I did it." She sat heavily on the edge of the bed.

On top of the chest of drawers, there was a small glass of water, in which sat a crushed sprig of lilac. It was too damaged in the fighting, thought Havelock, it'll die before the day is out. It's half-wilted already. He reached out and touched it with a finger. "I think," he said, "that we, you and I..." He paused, and sat beside her on the bed, hesitantly and with a careful distance between them. "They were focused on Winder. But it was bigger than Winder. The people in Treacle Mine Road knew that. It was always bigger than Winder."

"Are you sure?" said Rosie bitterly. "I've been out on the streets today. Nothing happened last night. The shops opened, the hash counters filled up, the bread got baked, people went to work."

The commercial heart of the city beats steadily, thought Havelock. It almost makes one proud to be Ankh-Morporkian. Almost. And, indeed, what were you doing today on the street corner by Misbegot Bridge, Miss Palm?

"They didn't see anything, and they didn't hear anything," said Rosie. "Nothing happened. They were right here through it all. How can they believe that?"

"They want to," said Havelock. It was the only answer there could be. "They want to believe that the day after is the same as the day before. More than safety, more than freedom, they want stability." What else could it be?

"That's not what I wanted," said Rosie. She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

She was crying, Havelock saw, much to his dismay. He had very limited experience of women crying. Madam didn't, as a rule, and the cooks and maids in the assassins' school rarely did so in front of the boys, and when they did, it was generally for joy. Only a fool would show a fourteen-year-old assassin-in-training when they were upset, and those women were no fools. If Rosie were another boy, he'd know what to say. The world wasn't kind to boys who blubbed; he'd observed that. But, 'Buck up, Palm, don't carry on like that,' didn't seem at all like the right thing. So Havelock fell back on practicality, which had rarely steered him wrong.

"Here," said Havelock, pulling a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and offering it to Rosie.

"Thank you," said Rosie. She dabbed her eyes and blew her nose in it. "I'll wash it for you."

"Keep it," said Havelock.

"We deserve better," said Rosie. "You know we do."

"Yes," said Havelock kindly. "I'm sorry about the guild."

"Not the guild," said Rosie. "Not just the guild, anyway. You and me, after what we did. The city. All of us. We deserve better."

"Yes," he said.

Havelock didn't have a high opinion of what the average person deserved, and wouldn't even make great claims about what he personally deserved. But he knew what the city deserved. He knew, with a certainty he would never express in words, because the feelings lived in a place too deep within him, what the city deserved. Twice yesterday he'd tried to give it that, and in the cold light of day, he knew he'd fallen short. But he had learned. The scope had been too small. Too many important details had been missed, had fallen outside the net they'd cast. It was no good restricting it to just Winder, or just Snapcase. It wasn't enough.

"Would you take me out for a drink?" said Rosie, looking up at him.

"Of course," said Havelock absently.

"No, you're not listening," said Rosie. "Would you take me out, for a drink? Just a drink, mind."

"Oh," said Havelock, rolling this thought around in his mind. "Would you like me to?"

"Yes," said Rosie patiently.

Havelock's main experience with girls was the sisters of his classmates. He found them pleasant enough and in many cases more sensible than their brothers, and had the sense that a fair number of them tended to feel the same about him. What he did not find them was particularly exciting, and the reverse was apparently also true. He was currently coming around to the realization that, at least from his point of view, what they lacked, broadly speaking, was the inclination to overthrow governments.

"Yes, I should think so," he said. "Would you mind making it dinner, too?"

"No, I don't mind," said Rosie. "And you're not going to be strange about me being a seamstress, are you?"

"I don't imagine I would be," said Havelock with a cautious uncertainty.

"Only a lot of men are," said Rosie. "And you seemed like you might not be."

 

He wouldn't try to impress her, would he? He had money, she knew that. Rosie didn't think she could handle it if he tried to impress her. She just wanted a drink and a friendly face, maybe an hour when things could be all right before they returned to normal.

And, well, she wouldn't say no to dinner, not when she had half a loaf of bread and some drippings to last the rest of the week. Money was tight. Lady Meserole had been generous and paid well for her time when she entertained , but more than a few working hours had been lost to setting up Lord Winder's demise these past few months. It'd been an investment. Not a very good one, as it turned out. And teenaged boys were supposed to be hungry all the time, weren't they? Even the posh ones, probably. It would be cruel to say no to dinner in that case, surely. But she didn't want him to try to impress her. She'd have to be grateful, or pretend to appreciate fine things instead of thinking about how they'd have paid for her rent. Tonight, Rosie didn't want to be grateful to people who lived comfortably or to pretend she didn't work long hours for the privilege of a tattered room in the Shades and a handful of missed meals a month.

The Cat and Custard Pot was a pub on the Ankh side of the river, near the Apothecary Gardens. It wasn't far from Rosie's digs as the crow flew, just across the Misbegot Bridge and off a little sidestreet down Prouts Avenue, but it was a million miles from the world she usually found herself in. The pub was small and grey on the outside, but inside it was clean and warm and the lanterns were lit, and it smelt of whiskey and pipe smoke and roasting meat and the peace of mind of having two coins to rub together, maybe even three. It wasn't a pub, thought Rosie, so much as the platonic ideal of a pub, a place where people were comfortable and bad things didn't happen. Havelock made a bee-line for a table in the corner by the fire.

"This is nice," said Rosie, and instantly felt awkward at the line. "I mean... it's nice. I like it. I wouldn't have thought you knew a place like this. It's not where your sort usually go, is it?"

Havelock flushed. "I study here sometimes," he said.

Of course he did. Rosie smiled.

Two pints of porter, a serving of chips, and half a pie later, the tight, quivery feeling that had gripped her all day started to loosen its hold on her. She was warm, and well-fed, and that was real. That was something she could take back to the Shades with her.

Havelock's first pint sat half-drunk in front of him. He wasn't much of a drinker, but he was perceptive. He'd known where to bring her, and he'd known enough to distract her with some meaningless piffle about the layout of the gardens and the long-gone apothecary that'd first built it. Maybe he was showing off, in his own strange way, but she didn't mind, because it was companionable and quiet and soothing, and spoke to things in the city continuing and moving on, undisturbed by all the tumult around them.

Rosie saw the expensive black clothes coming towards them before he did, and kicked him under the table, eyes pointedly looking not behind him. Havelock turned in his chair.

"Hello sir," he said

"Vetinari," drawled the toff in black.

"Yes, sir," said Havelock. Rosie noted the name. Not Meserole, then.

"Can finally see you _here_ , what?"

"Yes, sir, you can," said Vetinari with a bland cheerfulness. "Quite visible, sir."

"Good, good," said the assassin. "And with a young lady, I see." Rosie could see he had not missed the low cut of her dress and had formed a shrewd and entirely accurate opinion of her profession.

"Yes, sir," said Havelock.

"More discreet here than the Wh—" began the man.

"There's very good food here, sir," said Havelock. "It's not a patch on our canteen, of course, sir, but it's very good."

The man gave Havelock a look, like he couldn't imagine someone of his build much noticed things like the quality of food.

"Cook's shepherd's pie is aces," said Havelock, "but they do a nice one here, and a rather fine sausage and bean cassoulet, sir. I think the man in the kitchen is from Quirm. You wouldn't expect it, would you, sir."

"I see," said the man. "Well, then. We shall be seeing you in class, I expect."

"I expect not, sir," said Havelock cheerfully. "Though I shall certainly be seeing you."

When the assassin had gone, Rosie looked up at Havelock. "You could have let him say Whore Pits," she said.

"I certainly _could_ have, yes," said Havelock. "May I have one of your chips?"

She offered him the plate.

They were still there at quarter past ten, when the landlord brought Havelock a note. He read it. "Ah," he said.

"Is it bad news?" Rosie ate one of the walnuts Havelock had cracked open.

"Madam is waiting for us both outside," said Havelock. "With the carriage. We have an appointment to pay our respects at the Cemetery of Small Gods in half an hour."

"How did she find us?" said Rosie.

Havelock smiled thinly. "She's _Madam_ ," he said. He dropped a couple of dollars on the table and got up.

 

### Three - The Funeral

Watchmen were, as a rule, buried in the Cemetery of Small Gods, and generally with no one in attendance. Oh, occasionally a widow, and always a few other watchmen who'd taken the morning off. But they were buried without ceremony, and without much trace.

These watchmen were being buried in the middle of the night, without witnesses.

The winding path towards the interior of the cemetery was lined with trees, a curtain of soft-smelling blooms, and opened onto a small clearing hidden from the outside walls. There were seven fresh graves, a few lanterns, and a dozen men in battered armor milling about with lilac sprigs on their helmets, in the straps of their armor.

Havelock reached up into the canopy of flowers and used his dagger to cut two lilac twigs, laden with petals. He handed one to Rosie, and tucked the other into his buttonhole.

Lady Meserole raised an eyebrow.

"You weren't there, Madam," said Havelock softly.

"I think, Havelock, there was quite an interesting evening you didn't tell me about," said Lady Meserole. She slipped under the lilac trees, clad in lilac silk. Havelock pulled Rosie into the shadows with him, and let her grab his hand tightly.

A white-haired woman stood over one of the graves. One of the men hesitated and held out a handkerchief. "Mrs. Dickens?" he said. She took it, but she wasn't crying. Dai Dickens was the name on the stone. And then Nancyball, and Shoe... and Keel.

A scrawny lance-constable, no older than Havelock, stood by Keel's grave, snotty-nosed and red-eyed, trying to wipe his face clean with the back of his hand. "He didn't even get his egg!" said the boy. "The only thing he asked for out of all this, and he didn't even get to eat his egg!"

"Egg?" whispered Lady Meserole.

Havelock shrugged.

"Truth, justice, freedom, reasonably-priced love, and a hard-boiled egg," said Rosie. "That was their motto. The egg was his. It was what he thought he might actually get."

"He was something of a cynic," said Lady Meserole, "our Sergeant Keel."

"He was right to be," murmured Havelock.

"Hush now, Sam," said the plump sergeant standing beside the boy. "He was a good copper. A _proper_ copper. It's always too soon for them to go. Best thing you can do, as I see it, is be the copper he couldn't be."

"But he's _gone_ ," wailed Sam.

"He thought the world of you, you know," said the sergeant, nudging the boy in the ribs with a strained jollity that didn't show in his expression. "He was teaching you everything he knew. Teaching you to be a good copper, too. So he's not gone, not so long as you're coppering, right?"

Havelock glanced up at that, and inspected the boy's face carefully, looking for the watchman that Keel saw inside it. He hoped, for the lance-constable's sake, he hadn't learned Keel's lessons _too_ well. It wouldn't be a comfortable city for the sort of man Keel had trained, and the life expectancy might be similarly short. Still, Keel had held some interest for Havelock. So _that_ was a good copper... well, he was glad he'd seen one. Maybe one day he'd see another, but he wasn't holding his breath.

"Guess so, sarge," whispered the boy.

"I really thought..." said the sergeant, trailing off. He looked down at the fresh dirt of the grave. "Just for a while, you know, I really thought we could do it. That we could keep pushing the barricades back, filtering out all the muck, till we had the whole city behind 'em. He had an awful go at me for saying so. No one could do that, I know. But I really thought we could. Just for a moment."

It was sad, and terribly foolish. But the barricades _held_ , thought Havelock. The barricades had held.

 

The following day, a hard-boiled egg was placed on top of Keel's gravestone, with a lilac ribbon tied around it.

 

### Four - The Summer

One month later, the summer heat had rolled in from the rim. It wasn't the worst time to work without clothes, Rosie supposed. And say what you will about all that time she'd wasted on Winder, she thought, it'd been of some use after all. More work with the nobility than she'd ever had before. They paid for the rooms, you just had to be wearing the right dress when you arrived. She had plenty of dresses.

The second man got out of bed and washed his face in the basin. "What are you doing this summer, Bickerstaff?"

Bickerstaff buttoned up a shirt with frills at the wrists and neck. "Redoing poisons, worse luck. What about you, Downey?"

Downey reached for his trousers. "I might travel," he said. "Maybe take a year before I go back for graduate work."

Rosie stretched in the unexpected luxury of soft sheets. She didn't often get to work in places like this, and it'd likely end as suddenly as it started. The business was like that. She planned to enjoy it while she could. They both ignored her as they dressed.

"Going on a Grand Sneer?" said Bickerstaff. He slid a dagger up his sleeve and put on his cuff links. "Dinwoodie is, and Selachi Minor. And Vetinari."

"That scag," muttered Downey. He put money on the dresser.

  


That Octeday, Rosie walked along the Ankh bridge with Havelock and a shared lemon ice, as she had the week before. He hadn't said anything, so she did.

"So you're going away," she said. "Off on your... 'Grand Sneer', is it."

"Yes," said Havelock, looking at her with, if not surprise, a certain amount of careful attention. "How did you find out?"

"I hear things," said Rosie. She took the lemon ice from him. It was cool and tart and just a little bit sweet.

"Lord Snapcase is watching my aunt," he said. "Understandable, from his perspective, but _I'd_ rather not catch his eye. It seemed like a good time to go."

"But that's not why you're going," she said. "At the end of the day, you're a toff, and that's what toffs do, isn't it?"

"Yes, they do," said Havelock. "One of the more innocuous things that toffs do, I've always thought."

Rosie snorted, and slipped her arm into his while they walked home. "Will we have time for another drink before you go?" she said.

"I should think so," he said.

They walked in silence through the sunny streets in the Shades - despite the name, the Sun shone even in the Shades, though it did so more nervously - till they reached Rosie's building. Havelock opened his mouth.

"Don't say it," said Rosie, cutting him off before he could.

"I beg your pardon?" said Havelock.

"I'm thinking," said Rosie.

"I'd certainly hate to dissuade anyone from _that_."

"I don't want you to think I'm sentimental," said Rosie.

"No?" said Havelock.

"I'm not."

"I wouldn't have said you were," he said.

"I'm going to invite you up," said Rosie.

"Oh," said Havelock, considering this carefully. Of course she often invited him up, but she didn't mean that. "You mean you're inviting me, well, in. So to speak."

Rosie crossed her arms defensively. "It's a personal invitation. No money changing hands. I wouldn't be insulted if you offered. Frankly, I couldn't afford to be. But just... don't."

 

In her rooms, she was on surer ground. She didn't invite him to sit, as she usually did, but let him stand at the foot of her bed. Rosie started to unbutton the back of her dress, a long line of imitation pearl buttons down her spine. She turned her back to him, her hair held up so he could finish the ones she couldn't reach. "I'm not your first, am I?" she said.

"I don't think I shall say," said Havelock. He stepped forward and undid the remaining buttons. "Though I'm not... girls aren't really my thing, I mean."

"Oh. I didn't know," said Rosie. She held still, with the fabric of the dress pressed to her chest to keep it from falling. "You ought to have said. I wouldn't judge."

"No, I don't mean that," said Havelock. "Boys aren't really my thing, either. I just mean, that's not how I spend my time. I _would_ have said."

Rosie tried not to pay attention to the light fingertip tracing the back of her shoulders, which were bare where the dress had fallen away. "It's all right if you don't want to," she said carefully. "Whether or not... well, it's been very nice going out with you. It's all right if you don't want to."

"I do, though," said Havelock. "If you don't mind."

Rosie let the dress fall away, stepped out of it, and stood in her corset and crinoline.

Havelock hesitated. "I do understand," he said, "if it's not what you want to do in your personal time."

Part of her didn't want to, not in her personal time. Part of her thought that he was going away, and she wanted to give him something, and this is what she had. Part of her was very curious about Havelock Vetinari, and remembered rooftops and blood and lost causes.

"I'll make an exception," she said, reaching for the buttons on his collar. "This once."

She wasn't sure what to expect, from a boy several years younger than herself who seemed to have little interest or experience in bedding women. It turned out he was like Havelock always was; polite but not particularly uncertain, and unexpectedly worth it in the end.

 

### Five - The Grand Sneer

Havelock left in Grune. For the next two years, she got packets of postcards. No letters, or even a signature, just a small, paper-wrapped sheaf of illustrated pictures from different locations. The packet with pictures of nomads and monks and yaks arrived the same day he left, delivered by an elderly saffron-clad man with a broom who shrugged and told her to put it away for a couple of months until it was the right time for it. A few weeks later, it was "Quirm is for Lovers", followed by the gaily-colored "Pseudopolitan Charm", and then by a gray sheaf of landscapes that each bore the legend "Llamedos" in a small font in the corner. "This Is a Picture Of Lancre" declared the next packet bluntly, full of mountains and farm animals. "Vellcome to Scenic Übervald!" said the next, with illustrations of impossible gingerbread castles, snow-capped peaks, and hefty girls with serious faces in embroidered blouses. Eight or nine months after that, "Genua - Les Bonnes Temps Roulez" appeared. A single white card on which was printed, "Drawings are an abomination unto Nuggan". Then camels, dunes, tents, women in veils and jewelry, minarets rising out of the horizon.

Places she would never go, except possibly for a holiday in Quirm, if she saved up enough some day. She put the postcards away in a box in her dresser, and pulled them out to look at on the nights when she felt like seeing the world.

It was foolish to miss him, wasn't it? It wasn't as though she was lacking in male company. It wasn't even as though he'd been that good in — well, he had been, actually, and where he'd learned _that_ , she didn't want to know. He'd claimed it was just obvious. But Rosie didn't miss him for long, truth to be told, because life didn't stop. She had to earn a living. She liked the postcards, though. It was kind of him. It was nice to flip through them and look at a world outside Ankh-Morpork, where things were sunny and beautiful (or gray and rainy, in the case of Llamedos).

"I'm going out, Sadie," she said to the old woman in the rocking chair. She wrapped her shawl around her.

"Be careful, dearie," said Sadie. "It is _not_ going to be a nice night."

"It certainly isn't," said Dotsie, sharpening the tip of her umbrella.

They weren't wrong. The night had eyes, and they weren't friendly ones. Lord Snapcase never quite forgot his friends. That wasn't a good thing.

 

One afternoon, she came home soaked to the bone, and with fewer coins in purse than she'd have liked, and heard Dotsie call out from the sitting room, "Come have a cup of tea, dearie!"

Rosie took off her wet shawl and hesitated. "Let me get some dry clothes on."

"Your young man is here," said Sadie, appearing at the foot of the stairs. "The pot is fresh."

Rosie stopped on the stairs. "I don't have a young man," she said.

"Of course you do, dear. He's in the sitting room," said Sadie. "With Dotsie."

It was morbid curiosity and the desire to keep some poor fool's limbs attached to his body that drove her to the sitting room, where she found Havelock in a crisp black suit, with a china cup delicately held between thumb and forefinger. He was remarkably un-bludgeoned for a man who'd been in Dotsie's company for more than five minutes.

"You're soaking wet, dear," said Dotsie, disapprovingly.

"What are you doing here?" said Rosie.

"I came to see if you wanted dinner," said Havelock.

"I'm not dressed for it," said Rosie. "You're back, then."

"Go change, dearie," said Dotsie. "Something nice. Get a nice, hot meal in you for a change."

  


The waiter lit the candle, and silently took away the soup course. Rosie appreciated _avec_ when she got it, didn't miss it when she couldn't. That was the job, wasn't it.

"Thank you for the postcards," said Rosie. "That was kind of you."

"You're very welcome," said Havelock. "I hoped you might enjoy them."

He was taller, more quietly assured, more reserved. And she'd had a hard time thinking he could be more of any of those things. Two years, and he was harder to read. He hadn't exactly been an open book before. Oh well, thought Rosie, the only thing for it is the truth.

"I'm surprised you came back to see me," she said. "I'm surprised we're here. Out to dinner, I mean, not _here_." Though the restaurant was fancier than she'd expected; his tastes had changed, perhaps.

Havelock raised his eyebrows. "Of course we are," he said.

"I didn't think you'd be sentimental," said Rosie. "It was just the once. I do it for a living."

"As fondly as I remember the night in question," said Havelock, "I can't say that I'm sentimental about it. We're here for all the weeks previous to that."

Strolls on Octeday. A drink in the pub now and then. They had been friends, of a sort. Holding hands occasionally. Hours talking in her room. One night in bed. Maybe they were lovers of a particularly innocent sort; it was hardly her area of expertise, for obvious reasons. And the one terrible, terrible night that had followed the strange nightmare of that May. Rosie wasn't sure what they were.

"Oh," she said. "I see. How was your trip, then?"

"Extensive, as you saw." The waiter set down the vegetable course, and Havelock nodded him away. "But it had its charms."

"You've met someone," said Rosie. Well, it wasn't hard to guess, even for someone who didn't recognize his sort of understatement. He was a young man, he'd been away for two years.

"I met a lot of people," said Havelock.

Rosie shook her head. "You've met someone," she said. "You needn't be polite, I was hardly waiting chastely for you after one special night, was I."

He hesitated. "I did meet a woman. She was too old for me."

" _I'm_ too old for you," said Rosie. She'd had five years on that seventeen-year-old boy, when they'd first met, and felt every one of them sometimes.

"Not anymore, I think," said Havelock.

And when he said it, it sounded like the truth. The conversation had got away from her somehow, she hadn't expected it. His leg slid against hers under the table, almost as if accidentally, but it lingered slightly too long.

 

A hired cab took them to Treacle Mine Road, which was respectable enough, and he escorted her into the Whore Pits, which wasn't. She hesitated at the door. "It was a good dinner," she said, "and a confusing night. I'm sorry, it wasn't a very good day."

"You look cold," said Havelock, as if he hadn't heard her. "Let me see you in."

In her room, he sat on the bed, and leaned down to pull out a book. "What are you reading?" he said. He opened the cover and started reading. It was a historical novel, set back in the days there'd been kings and everything wasn't worn out and broken. It probably had been, that seemed like a literary conceit. But it was a nice thought, and that's what she read it for.

Rosie stood in the doorway for a few moments, watching him, then closed the door and sat down beside him.

"I missed you," she said. "Don't ask me why."

Havelock looked down at her, considering her for a moment, then draped one arm around her shoulders. "You needn't anymore."

Rosie leaned against him and nudged him. "Pass me a book and take your boots off. I won't have them on the quilt."

Havelock handed her the book he was reading, and leant down to unbutton his boots while Rosie crawled to the far side of the bed. Havelock pulled the next book off the stack and stretched out beside her, all long legs and precisely tailored suit, one arm under his head. Rosie looked over at him. She had missed him.

"You can kiss me, if you like," she said.

"Yes, I think I would enjoy that," he said. He didn't move from where he was reading.

Rosie opened her book and found her page. "But I wouldn't mind a night off from the other."

"Quite understandably," said Havelock, as though they were discussing the weather. "Some other time, perhaps."

Rosie smiled. "Yes, some other time." She folded her pillow over to raise her head and began reading, the room lit in the soft golden glow of the oil lamp beside the bed.

 

### Six - The Trouble With Snapcase

The problem with patricians, to most people's minds, was that by the time they got around to acquiring the prefix "Mad" before the "Lord", they were not just bad and dangerous to know, which went without saying when it came to patricians, but they were also very bad for business. And by the time it was generally recognized that they were very bad for business, the people on the margins had been feeling the squeeze for a few years.

Lord Snapcase was Mad.

Rosemary stared up at the ceiling, and thought about what she'd wanted to do with the savings from those good years, the things she'd had planned before it'd gone bad. Well, it had to be done. She didn't have to like it. "You could send work my way," she said. "If you felt like it. Business... isn't good."

Havelock rolled over in bed and propped himself up on his elbow. " _I_ could pay — "

She cut him off. "No. Not you."

"I'm fully aware," said Vetinari with an unexpected gentleness, "that women need to make their way in the world one way or another."

"No," said Rosemary. "Men get easily confused." And so, in truth, did she. She didn't want to forget that he was personal. He was hers by choice.

"My aunt," said Vetinari, pausing on the word slightly longer than he might, "considers it ungentlemanly of me, and I do believe she has a point. One does a discourtesy to a professional when one declines to pay. She did raise me to respect women in... the professions."

"I'm not working every hour of the week," said Rosemary. "I'm not working with you."

"Yes," said Vetinari. He settled back down on his pillow. "That's what I told her."

"Good," said Rosemary. She pulled the sheet tightly around her chest. There was no reason to. He'd already seen the bruise on her ribs, hadn't said anything. He'd just raised an eyebrow and run a finger over it gently, till she'd muttered something about a client who'd got fresh. But she was involving him in her business, and that, of all things, made her come over all prim, like an angry spinster.

"I do believe, however," said Vetinari mildly, "that you are hungry most hours of the week, including the ones spent with me."

Rosemary said nothing, but fumed silently. Because he was right, the bastard, and he had no right to be. He was hers, he was her private thing, but he was _rich_ , and he had no idea, with his well-tailored clothes and his public school manners, his public school where they cultivated artificial hardships for elite young men in order to build their character. The sorts of hardships the poor got handed never seemed to do anything for their character, by all accounts, or she'd be full up with it by now. It was intolerable that he, as her friend, might offer her money in return for any of the few small moments of intimacy they had, and it was equally intolerable that he, as her friend, could sit in his house year after year, with his servants bringing him meals, and not offer her money for her... her _services_... while the rent went unpaid and food went unbought, not when a mistress would do better on the arrangement, and he knew it.

"Just send paying work my way," she said.

Vetinari closed his eyes and considered. "Very well," he said. He slid his hand over hers. After a short hesitation, she held his hand back. "And if, for some, I were to offer you as much again to be, shall we say, _unusually_ negotiable in your affections for those clients...?"

Rosemary turned her head and looked at him in surprise. "What are you planning?" she said quietly.

The corners of Vetinari's mouth twitched. "I have no idea what you mean," he said blandly. "I simply enjoy... information. Information you might be perfectly placed to collect, with the right business connections. For an appropriate fee, of course."

"I wouldn't normally," she said. "But if they wanted seamstresses to follow rules..." They would have supported the guild, she didn't say. It could hurt them as much as her. That was fair. She could make that hurt them as much as it hurt her, and wouldn't even feel bad about it, not much.

"Indeed," said Vetinari.

Rosemary put her hand on Vetinari's face. It was a thin, angular face, smooth skin over high cheekbones and the roughness of his beard along his jaw and chin. There were small crows' feet at the corner of his eyes where they crinkled when he was trying not to smile. And his eyes were blue, a cool ice blue, watching her passively with the coiled tension of a cat. She kissed him, quickly and then more slowly, and his hand tightened on her other wrist.

He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her, but said nothing.

"You were a pretty boy," she said, not knowing why she said it. "Though you're not exactly a pretty man." Not even quite a handsome one, but certainly a striking one. She rarely saw the boy in him these days, but sometimes, when she looked for him, he was there.

"Alas, the march of time does that to us all, madam," said Vetinari with an amused self-deprecation. "Most boys, pretty or otherwise, grow to be tedious men of quite average looks. Although you, I see, were a beautiful woman, and are still one now."

She was thirty-four. Thirty-four, and hadn't been a small girl even when she was young. That wasn't the end of a career for a seamstress, but it was closer than she'd like to admit, and it'd been on her mind. If she could afford to rent a house when the day came, take some of the gentler girls off the street, then maybe she'd make it. If not... a forty-year-old Seamstress started rapidly running out of luck and options.

Rosemary kissed him again, and if he heard her whisper, "I'm running out of time, Havelock," he didn't acknowledge it. But he did put his arms around her and pull her against him, in an unexpectedly demonstrative gesture.

"Look out the window," said Vetinari. His arm circled her waist, and his fingers dug into the soft, round flesh of her hip. "What do you see?" She turned her head to the window and rested it on his chest, long auburn hair fanning out onto on his shoulder.

It was early March, grey and wet and dreary. The window was covered with a spattering of rain. The sooty brick of the smithy across the alley took up most of the view, with a tree in between the two buildings. The tree outside was bare and dark, with small leaf buds forming at the tips of the branches. It was a lilac tree, one of the reasons she'd taken these rooms when she'd moved in. She'd wanted the reminder. Later in the spring, it'd bloom, purple against the grimy charcoal-grey. But right now, it was just a none-too-clean window with streaks of water dribbling down, out of which stood a dark wall and a dark sky.

"Muck," said Rosemary shortly.

"Well, yes," said Vetinari. "I concede the point. It is Ankh-Morpork." He stroked her hair.

"And a tree," said Rosemary, relaxing slightly.

"Yes. Awaiting spring, I should think. Do you know," said Vetinari, "the wonderful thing about May? It comes around again, every year."

At that, she looked back down at him. His face was expressionless, but his eyes were Havelock Vetinari's eyes, calculating and sharp and quick.

"The terrible thing is that it so often disappoints," said Vetinari. His hand rested on her back in a quiet, companionable way. "Most things do. But the wonderful thing is that it always comes around again."

Rosemary let her thighs slide against either side of him, large and round and soft against his sharp hipbones, and leaned up as his hands dropped to knead them. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his face. When she started nibbling his ear, he closed his eyes with a contented sigh.

"I'm glad you came today," said Rosemary. And she was.

 

### Seven - The Palace

There were few terrors, thought Rosemary, like the one that came when three armed palace guards banged on your door and told you the Patrician wanted to see you. Particularly at eight o'clock in the morning, when, still fuzzy from late nights and early mornings, it took several seconds to remember that this was no longer Snapcase. Hadn't been Snapcase for a full thirty-six hours, in fact, if rumors were to be believed.

She didn't believe the rumors about who was in his place. They couldn't possibly be false, but she couldn't believe them.

Not until she walked into the Oblong Office, a bright paneled room lit by pale morning sun streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows, and saw him sitting behind the broad oak desk, clad in black robes. He looked exactly like, well, himself, and yet he looked exactly like he belonged there, so much so that she began questioning whether it was her past memories of him that were false rather than this.

"Lord Vetinari will see you now, Miss Palm," said the secretary who had escorted her in from the outer office.

Vetinari looked up. "Thank you. You may go. Miss Palm, please do sit."

Rosemary sank into the chair in front of the desk and stared at him.

He leaned back in his chair, folded his hands, and stared back, faintly amused.

"Good gods," she said. "It's true, then. You could have told me."

"It seemed wiser not," he said. "Though you have had several years of hints, have you not. I thank you for your assistance."

She had. This was what he'd been doing, wasn't it. This was what all that information had been for, all those years he'd sent clients her way. She could have pieced it together, couldn't she? She knew it was political, because she knew him. She knew whom he'd targeted. She knew what he'd wanted from them. She knew what he thought of Snapcase. They hadn't talked about it much; it was as though they'd said it all the first time around with Winder and there was nothing else to be said. But there'd been little asides, little muttered complaints. Rosemary had just never imagined, in all the years she'd known Havelock, that he'd wanted this office for himself. That he saw himself sitting there. That his vision was this big.

And she felt like a fool for that, now, because it was obvious in retrospect, wasn't it.

"That is a bloody terrifying way to be summoned," said Rosemary, trying to cover her discomfort.

"Is it? I'm so sorry," said Vetinari, though he didn't look it. "I do beg your pardon."

She watched him sit there behind the desk, dark and unmoving. "This changes things, doesn't it," she said, with a little regret.

"I'm afraid it does," said Vetinari, and this time he actually did look sorry. "Considerably. But not entirely for the worse, I hope." He pulled a folder out from a drawer and nudged it in front of her. "I regret I didn't have time to see you yesterday."

Rosemary opened the folder and read. "Guild incorporation papers."

"It seems to me ," said Vetinari, "that you've been waiting some time for them."

She had. Almost too long, for her.

The line next to the word "President" had been filled in with the words "Mrs. Rosemary Palm" in some clerk's careful copperplate. Had her vision once been this big? It had. It was. She'd have killed him if, after all those years, all those years with _her_ , he'd refused them a guild, and here he was offering her a... well, a future. "This will change things, too," she said.

"All things change," said Vetinari. "It's the way of things. There's a council position for the guild president, by the way."

He was being formal with her, more than usual, and this was probably why. She was his adversary now, and his ally, in unpredictable turns. She would advise and scheme, threaten and concede, bargain and beg. It would change everything, for them, yes, but also for every seamstress in the city, and that's what it'd all been for. He understood that better than most. She signed quickly, and sat back in her chair. "Thank you, my lord," she said, putting Havelock out of her mind in favor of Lord Vetinari.

He smiled at her briefly. "You're extremely welcome, Mrs. Palm. I trust you will complete the bylaws and registration in due course. Please, don't let me detain you."

  


### Eight - The Dedication

"...and so, the city of Ankh-Morpork gives its thanks to Lady Sybil Ramkin, whose generosity in donating Pseudopolis Yard to the Night Watch is... certainly without precedent."

With those admittedly ambiguous words, the Patrician slipped to the back of the room, followed by a glare from Captain Vimes, who was not a fool when he wasn't drunk, it seemed.

A tall red-headed boy in a lance-constable's uniform jumped up and began clapping. "And so say all of us!" he cried. Heavens preserve us, thought Vetinari.

As Vimes tried to regain control and tentative applause broke out, Vetinari leaned down to speak _sotto voce_ to the short copper-haired woman he'd ended up beside. "I hear, Madam, that your establishment has recently lost a most charming male lodger."

"He's unbelievable, isn't he," said Mrs. Palm, going through the motions of clapping.

"Unlikely, certainly," said Vetinari, eying Lance-Constable Carrot. "I'm rather afraid I believe." I'm rather afraid I do, he thought, and who knows how that will end.

"He's a sweet boy," said Mrs. Palm. "If a little slow on the uptake."

"He's rather well-built, I'm given to understand," said Vetinari, schooling is face into a carefully passive expression, "though of course I defer to your expertise on the subject."

"My expert opinion is that he is," said Mrs. Palm politely, "and if we were not in public, I'd give you the slap you richly deserve."

"I have no doubt you would try," said Vetinari. The waiter came around with a tray of sherry; Vetinari passed one to Mrs. Palm without taking one for himself. "Business is doing well?"

"Very," she said. She nodded at Captain Vimes, who was giving a speech rather more angrily than Vetinari had thought possible. Public speaking was not an inherently angry art, under normal circumstances. "I haven't seen him sober in years. Er, he is sober, isn't he?"

"So I'm led to believe," said Vetinari. "I think the undercurrent of barely-suppressed rage might be the tell, as they say."

"Sam Vimes," said Mrs. Palm quietly. "I nearly forgot he was one of us. I didn't remember him for years. Not until some Watch sergeant kept showing up at the cemetery. He did well to make captain, but he could have gone further."

"That, Madam, may well be the cause for the rage," said Vetinari. "I'd rather given up on him, by the time I took office. Twelve years under Snapcase ruined the man, as it ruined so many things. It seems I may have been a little hasty, though, alas, his revelation and mine may have come too late."

It was a great shame, thought Vetinari, as he'd very much hoped to see Keel's like again, and had scarcely dared hope he might, amidst the incompetence and corruption that formed the core of Ankh-Morpork policing till now. Vimes would be retiring to marry before the year was out; he'd be training some new coppers, hopefully impart something of value, and then would be gone. If the opportunity arose, he thought, he would see if Captain Sam Vimes remembered the things that Lance-Constable Sam Vimes had seen. Nothing he had done had ever jolted drunk Sam Vimes into action for long, but a sober Sam Vimes might hardly be jolted out of it, with the right pressures applied.

"Cruces," said Mrs. Palm under her breath; and indeed, the good Dr. Cruces was making a bee-line for him.

"Thank you," he said. "Dinner at the usual time, Mrs. Palm?"

"It will be my pleasure, my lord," she said.

"Then if you will excuse me," said Vetinari, turning away without a hint of the reluctance he felt. "Ah, Dr. Cruces! How delightful to see you."

 

### Nine - The Truth

The fire in Havelock's study was, unusually, warm and welcoming in the cold winter night, and was, Rosemary knew, less in deference to any of the people in the room than to the small occupant of the dog basket in front of the fire, who slept deeply, with the occasional shivery squeak and growl. Outside, the snow swirled on the wind and blew against the glass.

"Rosemary," said Vetinari, reclining on the dark leather chaise, "if you keep voting against the majority on my behalf, gossip will turn into difficult questions about your conflicts of interest."

"Havelock," said Rosemary, seated on the rug with her head resting against his thigh, "if you keep getting deposed by the council for one crime or other, it'll eventually take."

Vetinari smiled an oddly warm smile and stroked her hair. "Ah, then we are both justly chastened for taking undue risks."

She stilled and closed her eyes for a moment, pressing her face against the heavy wool that cloaked him, breathing in the smell of wool and juniper and Havelock. There were not as many of these nights as there might be, but more now than there had been, more than she'd once thought there might be.

"We're far too old for this, you know," she said, muffled by the robes.

"For what?"' said Vetinari, fingers playing with the curl that had escaped at her temple.

"Cozy winter domestic scenes," she said. Noticing the way you smell, she thought. Liking that you smile more in the past few years. The corners of her lips twitched upward. "You writing love letters to your teenage crush in Uberwald."

Vetinari's eyes crinkled up in amusement. "Madam, I assure you, I keep flirtation to a bare minimum in official diplomatic exchanges."

"That, I suspect, is because the official diplomatic exchanges _are_ the flirtation," said Rosemary. She put an arm around his waist. "And I want you to know, we're only doing this because you have an irritating habit of almost getting yourself killed. I'm not known for domestic."

"Nor I," said Vetinari, stroking the nape of her neck. "Though it seems we're not known for it once a week these days."

The tray with the teapot lay on the floor beside her; she sat up, refilled both cups, and held one saucer up for Havelock. He took it carefully and sipped. Rosemary leaned against him and drank her tea, and they lapsed into a comfortable silence.

It was almost once a week these days, she thought. How strange. How strange, and how different this was from when this had started. Were they even the same people, she wondered. She didn't think so. She didn't feel the same. How odd that the habit of each other would outlast the people they used to be. She wasn't sorry; she rather liked the man, and that was fortunate, because it seemed he was a part of her, in some way she couldn't describe.

"Your clerk is well?" she said.

"Drumknott? Yes, indeed," said Vetinari.

"And you are, for the moment, finished with being shot, drugged, stabbed, and knocked unconscious any more than strictly necessary?" said Rosemary.

"For the moment, yes," said Vetinari.

"I'm very glad to hear it," said Rosemary. "No other injuries you haven't thought to mention before now?"

"Madam, do you wish to inspect my person to be sure?" said Vetinari.

"I've been considering it, yes," said Rosemary. "If my lord will permit the liberty."

"I think," said Vetinari, "that it would be unusual if I did not."

Rosemary finished her tea, while Havelock rubbed her shoulder languidly. In a disconcerting flash, she wondered if, when he looked at her, he sometimes saw her when she was young, the Rosie she barely remembered, the way she sometimes saw him. What a strange thing it is to be a part of someone else that way. She'd never expected it.

"It's a great irony," said Vetinari, "that the rewards of a senior administrative position in your profession include time for a personal life, while in mine, they preclude it." He picked up his cane from the floor and leant on it rather more heavily than usual as he stood. He held a hand down to Rosemary. "Shall we?"

"How is your leg?" she said, pulling herself up. "Would you like me on top tonight?"

"Madam," said Vetinari, "I would like you wherever you wish to be." He didn't let go of her hand, but held it, and bent over the dog basket, giving the dog a gentle shake. "Bedtime. Come along."

Wuffles stood slowly with a yawn, and padded behind them, his collar jingling in the silent corridor.

 

### Ten - The Twenty-Fifth of May

The room was silent apart from the sound of a pen nib scratching over paper, and then there was a knock on the door before it opened a few inches. Drumknott cleared his throat.

"Mrs. Rosemary Palm to see you, sir," he said.

"Indeed?" said Vetinari, looking up. "Please, show her in, Drumknott."

Her skirts rustled when she walked, satin over crinoline. At the door, she undid the toggle at the throat of a velvet cloak and handed it to Drumknott. She was dressed for the opera, though she often was, whether or not the opera-house was in her itinerary. Her coppery hair was up in a low chignon and the olive-green gown shimmered in the lamplight. Rosemary looked glorious, and because it was late at night, with only Drumknott present, Vetinari allowed himself to look.

"Mrs. Palm," said Vetinari. "Always a pleasure."

"Good evening, my lord," said Mrs. Palm.

"Thank you, Drumknott, that will be all," said Vetinari, with a nod to his secretary, who quietly backed out, the lady's velvet cloak over his arm, and closed the door behind him. Vetinari gestured towards the chair facing him, and Rosemary sat.

"You were at the cemetery this evening," she said. She wore a small sprig of lilac pinned to the olive-green bodice.

"You're well-informed," said Vetinari. "Is this a personal visit, or a professional one?" He knew, of course. Tonight, of all nights. But he never assumed, not in this office.

Rosemary looked at him softly. "I think you know," she said. "Is your aunt well?"

"Thank you, yes," said Vetinari. He capped his pen and pushed it aside. "She still resides in Pseudopolis, and has... Very Firm Ideas about the future of ducal power."

"Oh dear," said Rosemary. "Does the Patrician have any firm ideas about ladies with designs on foreign dukes?"

Vetinari smiled thinly. "The Patrician is deeply curious, in an academic sense, about this flirtation with republican thought. I predict no end of entertainment if she succeeds. However, I would suggest, Mrs. Palm, that it is not the duke, per se, on whom my aunt has designs. Though it might have been so in her youth." He thought about this for a moment. "Or perhaps I am wrong. My aunt is a woman of great vitality. I do not, however, believe she currently aspires to the noble scepter. On the other hand, the republican... goodness, what phallic object do the republicans have? I can't think."

"Nor can I," said Rosemary, leaning down to the floor, where a little snout pressed against her shoes. "A ballot box?"

"The inverse of a phallic object, I believe," said Vetinari. "A ballot box is designed for quite the opposite role. And my aunt, admirable though she is in most respects, appears to have little interest in feminine charms when managing her affairs. No, I think her designs on the duke of Pseudopolis are purely of the _qui totum perdit_ variety."

Rosemary's attention to the area around her feet was now producing the slow but regular _thump-thump-thump_ of a tail hitting the floor as it wagged. Wuffles lay in an undignified sprawl, legs in the air. Vetinari's face thawed, but his eyes were melancholy. It wouldn't be long; he knew it, Rosemary knew it, and probably the dog knew it.

"Are you free this evening?" she asked, even though she knew the answer, tonight of all nights. The same way he couldn't assume why she'd come, she had to ask. A Patrician, _this_ Patrician, was not an ideal social companion, for this and many other reasons, he knew.

"My dear woman," said Vetinari with a small smile. "I am, as always, at your disposal."

 

There were things Rosemary could only tell Havelock Vetinari alone in the dark, and even then, only on some nights. Even after all this time. It couldn't be helped; it was their jobs, from which they were inseparable, and it was them, and thank goodness they had each other. No one else would put up with it. But she was never sorry that there was someone who knew her secrets, her intimate confidences, and never sorry she knew his, or at least the few he cared to share, and maybe that was a sort of love, too. Rosemary had come to think so.

"Do you have to go in the morning?" she said, nestling in next to him. He did, of course, and so did she. Staying was never really an option.

"Alas, I must," said Vetinari. "At eight o'clock sharp, I will have the unique and thoroughly unexpected pleasure of putting one of the Cable Street Particulars on trial and knowing that, when he hangs, the city brought at least one of them to justice properly."

Rosemary sucked in a breath sharply.

"...but I certainly haven't just said so," he added. He pulled her in closer, till she felt molded to the angular planes and hollows of his body.

Havelock was, in middle-age, still wiry and hard, and surprisingly strong, while she was rounder and softer, and rather heavier around the middle. She didn't mind the way her body changed with age, apart from an acute professional awareness of the value men placed on her body in dollars and pence. She had told that to him once, and had expected something like perhaps, "no one can help the way they're made," or "wouldn't it be unfortunate if we were all the same," which were the sorts of thing he'd say. What he'd said instead was, "They're buying the body, but paying for the dream. It's much harder to put a dollar and pence value on reality. No one could afford the true cost." She hadn't bothered worrying about it after that.

"Do you ever wonder what would have happened if it'd worked?" she said in the dark.

He hesitated. "Not for a long time, I'm afraid," he said.

"Not since you..." became the Patrician, she didn't say.

"No," said Havelock. "Not since then."

"I didn't used to think it was worth it," said Rosemary. "Now I think maybe it was worth it in the end."

Havelock didn't answer her, and she suddenly realized why: when you tried to put a value on reality, when you asked what it was really worth, no one could afford the true cost.

"Don't let go," said Rosemary suddenly. He didn't answer that, either, just stroked her back soothingly. But then, he never had let her go from the night he pulled her up onto the rooftop, had he.

  


### Eleven - The Next Day

The Glorious Revolution had lasted all of a few hours, and what had it been for? Truth, freedom, justice, reasonably-priced love, and a hard-boiled egg.

It was half-past five in the morning, and Havelock Vetinari lay awake in bed. Dawn was still fifteen or twenty minutes away, but the sky had lightened with a soft pinkish light at the horizon. He lay awake and turned the words over and over in his head.

There was truth, to a degree. Mr. de Worde claimed to print it, and Havelock tended to think that was so. Sam Vimes claimed to find it, and gods help anyone who stood in his way. Vetinari, who felt the truth was a slippery thing, didn't feel qualified to gainsay those two men. There were, of course, the petty dishonesties on which city life ran, but he supposed that Ankh-Morpork had a reasonable share of truth. More, indeed, than many cities, and it was quite democratic as to source.

Justice, certainly. It was justice getting him up at this god-forsaken hour. it was justice that had kept Sam Vimes from killing Carcer with his bare hands, the faith that he was going to get it, and that it was even for people like Carcer. Oh, Ankh-Morpork had justice.

Freedom, yes. There were no slaves in Ankh-Morpork, he had seen to that. The trolls walked the streets unchained, held jobs, raised families. They were the biggest dwarf city outside the home territories in Uberwald and Llamedos. The free press printed what they liked, when they liked, with little to fear from him. People were not only free to form groups to oppose him politically, he downright encouraged it. Indeed, he often created the groups _for_ them. Trade was free, or at least quite gently taxed and highly encouraged, provided one's name was not Dibbler. No one disappeared in the middle of the night. Or at least, only those who could not be dealt with by justice, of whom there were mercifully few.

Reasonably-priced love? Fairly regulated, certainly, and the seamstresses had few complaints about paying into pension schemes rather than paying bribes for the Watch to look the other way. So reasonably-priced all around, he thought. Those who traded it for free had no civic guarantees they were getting what they'd bargained for — unless they entered a contractual arrangement, which was still popular even in these modern days, he was led to believe — but he could not, in fact, regulate everything.

As for boiled eggs, well, the city was well-supplied with eggs these days, though, being a reasonable man, he didn't demand people boil them. It took all sorts in a world, after all.

And to cap it off, he was about to put Sergeant Keel, so-called, back in command of Treacle Mine Road. And it was only then that it occurred to Vetinari _precisely_ what he'd done.

If Vimes thought that was a favor to him, he'd been meant to think so, but it wasn't. I've done it, don't you see, thought Vetinari. He had moved the barricades back, right to the edge of the city, and sieved out everything that wasn't the People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road. And now the universe was letting him put Keel back in charge of the watch house. Without conscious intent, he'd returned the city to what it might have been that night. He had done it.

He kissed the top of Rosie's sleeping head. She was curled around him, her head tucked in against his shoulder. Time had put sixty pounds on her frame and crows' feet beside her eyes, the way it'd put a bullet through his thigh and gray in his hair, and she was deeply beautiful. She stirred sleepily and mumbled something unintelligible.

"I've done it, Rosie," he said quietly. "Thirty years, and I've finally done it. We pushed the barricades back right to the edge of the city. We did it."

Outside the open window beyond the foot of the bed, the sun had started to rise over Ankh-Morpork, painting it in soft pinks, orange, and yellows. Inside, he held Rosie and thought that, for perhaps the first time in his life, he wanted the same thing everyone wanted, for tomorrow to be just like today.

The barricades had held. They were still holding. The air smelled of smoke, and the Ankh, and of lilacs.

**Author's Note:**

> The book seems to have Rosie in two places at once on the 25th of May, so I made a Pratchettian retcon-of-convenience and picked the one that was more relevant to the plot of "Night Watch", and, importantly, more useful to me.


End file.
